09-30-08 Tuesday (Discontinued)

Another problem with the jacks this morning, delayed us on our next destination to Ouray, Colorado. Jim had purchased a new pump thingy to transfer fluid directly from the bottle to the reservoir. Wow, how great this will be. A few pumps, and the hose on the pump blew off spewing ATF fluid all over. Damn it! We clean up the mess and hit the road by 9am.

Because of the McDonald's problem the prior day, Jim made it a point to incorporate a McDonald's into the journey. Awwwwwwww, how sweet. I was concerned about getting the RV into a McDonald's parking lot but we "went for it". We had to go in the wrong way because it was a dead end street and we can't u-turn in the RV beast. I went inside and ordered, found out my favorite bagel sandwich was being deleted, made my alternate selection and returned to the RV for breakfast at "our place". I'm still bummed.

On parts of our route, early on in the day, was a constant incline. At one point the coach wasn't able to go any faster than 20MPH. Scary. Jim tried petting the dash while spouting words of inspiration, but it didn't seem to help. Scarier. We pulled over with thoughts that something is wrong. We examined the brakes, parking brake, Cherokee, etc. All was OK. Turned out, a wicked down slope was just a few feet ahead. We checked out our elevation and we were at 8136. We figured it was a combination of a constant incline, with a high altitude, sprinkled with full fuel tanks and a lot of fresh water on board.

Further on in the trip as we seemed to climb higher, I checked out our elevation. Our top mark in the RV was at 11,600! Wowsers. We drove on mountain tops, and in canyons. It was all spectacular, a close running with some of the Wyoming views. The natural colors confirmed this is the best time of the year to see the mountains. I talk about the colors alot lately, especially the yellows. Some of the yellows are so bright, almost neon, it's amazing it comes from nature. Here and there, I'll see oranges and reds mixed in and it creates the perfect natural backdrop. Down below, check out the nearly 360 view video and below that, a slideshow of today's pictures.

A couple of other interesting factoids is we crossed the Continental Divide, unique this time, since it was in the RV. In Yellowstone it was done in the Cherokee. We also drove through South Park, Colorado which is the town featured in the South Park cartoons.

We arrived in Ouray, and picked a spot (they are empty), close to the river. I inspected the river behind us, and it's pretty low and mucky right now. Oh well. I'll take pictures of that later. After setup a trip to Wal-Mart! Yay. Actually before Wal-Mart we went to Chili's for dinner. Jim was bummed they discontinued the Awesome Blossom. Bastards!